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LONG BLOG

I've read this article on the main site by Ryan Perez (and please, no kerfuffles about what transpired recently, neither the time nor place) about how he's sick of the typical western fantasy setting, and to be honest? I kinda agree, so being the mythology buff that I be, here's a list of the many mythologies that I think would really be awesome, and even some of the games that use them already:

Norse Mythology

Now you might be wondering to yourselves here "But Viredae, isn't Western Fantasy and specifically Skyrim based on Norse Mythology?", I'd say yes, but it's so loosely adapted that there's barely any connection, in fact, the connection can be summed up to "they live in a cold place and they sorta resemble vikings."

This in and of itself is a very tiny part of Norse Mythology, and considering the Norse pantheon is one of the most well-known set of myths out there, I'm surprised it hasn't inspired alot more games by now, unfortunately, the only games that really delve into the idea are the games from the Valkyrie Profile series, which is quite awesome, don't get me wrong, but we can certainly do with more.

Valkyrie Profile: Woefully sans Loki

Japanese Mythology

Japanese Mythology is weird, man. It contains things such a version of Adam & Eve where Eve is a zombie, Adam is a dude who outruns his pursuers by peeing a river (Literally!) and throwing peaches at them, to a Lush Hydra that argues with its own eight heads on the best way to kill the denizens of a farmhouse without spilling or ruining their booze (because hey, nobody likes wasted booze!), all the way to a sun god that basically goes on strike because her brother got into a fight her and threw a flayed horse onto her front-porch (she really liked horses, you see), and to reconcile her, the other gods put up a strip joint outside the cave she's squatting in to get her to come out.

Gaston: Belle, why is there a naked lady dancing on a tub in front of a cave in this book?Belle: It's Avant Garde

And if you've managed to keep away that feeling in the picture above away from you, you just might start wondering why the hell don't we get games like that?

But actually, there are a lot of games based on Japanese mythology already, god knows that that's the first source of fantasy in the games that the Japanese made, but very few have actually been localized, because it's too weird and alien to us westerners, and we certainly don't want to go outside our comfort zone for anything that might be as awesome as that!

Sumerian Mythology

Also known as Mesopotamian Mythology, and what is probably considered one of the oldest (if not oldest) civilization in known history.

In fact, it also happens to provide one of the earliest storytelling structures ever to sink its claws into modern writing:

The Hero's Journey.

Anyone who's ever had any interest in writing probably knows the whole pattern of the story, but many of you don't, and since I'm a lazy bastard, have this little image here to explain what the Hero's Journey basically is:

Now that we're done with that, it is true that you can argue that the tale of Gilgamesh is actually nearly half of every story out there, so there's no point in pointing it out.

... Except that there are no games about it.

No, seriously, the oldest story in history apparently has one trilogy from the NES days (the Tower of Druaga series) and that's it, nothing else, no games based on its mythology, not even any references beyond the Gilgamesh from the Final Fantasy series, and that is dreadfully under-represented.

Congratulations, you've just seen pretty much all of Gilgamesh's appearances in video games

And that's it for today, I may do a part two of this at some point, but I think I just gave you a wealth of information to consider and come up with game ideas from.

Goodbye for now, and remember: the next time you get attacked by a Hydra, get some booze.

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About Viredaeone of us since 11:51 AM on 10.13.2011

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